Financial and Economic Reform Measures in Late Tang Dynasty

1, actively use the laws of commodity economy to guide economic work.

This is by no means intentionally high. This was a big breakthrough at that time. The feudal rulers and economic reformers before Ada, including the famous Sang Hongyang in Han Dynasty, basically adopted the policy of emphasizing agriculture and restraining commerce. Ada was the first person to actively use the laws of commodity economy to guide the economy, especially to develop production with the help of private commodity economy. It is no accident that Ada formed this idea, which mainly comes from his in-depth investigation and understanding of the economic situation in the Tang Dynasty during his decades as a local official, as well as his research on economic reform and financial management in previous dynasties. It also reflects his ideological attitude of seeking truth from facts.

He not only attaches importance to hosting official enterprise, but also attaches importance to and is good at organizing the production and circulation of important commodities with the help of private enterprises. Contrary to the measures taken by successive dynasties to restrain commerce, he took many measures to facilitate commerce during his economic work in Datang, which greatly promoted the prosperity of commodity economy, increased economic income and enriched national finance. His thoughts are embodied in the salt monopoly. In the early Tang Dynasty, the old system of Sui Dynasty was followed, and salt was forbidden, not monopolized, and no special tax was charged, from which businessmen made a fortune. This situation lasted for almost more than a century. In the later period of Anshi Rebellion, Wuqi was in charge of financial work and implemented the monopoly policy of direct price increase by officials, which was exactly the same as that implemented by Guan Zhong, Shang Yang and Sang Hongyang, or even worse. In this kind of salt monopoly, from people to people, it is directly changed to people's official collection, official transportation and official sales (ten times higher than before), completely excluding a small number of small businessmen selling salt. Although this has increased fiscal revenue, it has also brought many disadvantages, such as the extensive increase of salt officials, greatly increased personnel expenses, coupled with corruption, poor management and poor supply in rural areas, which has greatly affected the growth of national fiscal revenue. An important aspect of Ada's salt policy rectification is a major reform of the salt monopoly system, that is, changing the direct monopoly system into the indirect monopoly system-"local monopoly system", and deciding to completely abandon the official transportation and official sales, and implement a new form of civil system, official collection, commercial transportation and commercial sales. The state only controls the first-class wholesale, and small wholesale and retail are left to businessmen. Having said that, we seem to feel that this practice is similar to today's "grasping the big and letting go of the small". To this end, he has formulated relevant supporting policies. First, he unified the tax policy, only included the tax in the price of salt in the country of origin, and paid the local tax to the country without paying the turnover tax in the process of transportation and sales. In order to ensure the implementation of this policy, he specially asked Dai Zong to order that local officials and local garrisons should not levy transit salt taxes at different levels. In this way, it reduces the extra burden of merchants trafficking in public salt, reduces the cost of transporting salt, and is conducive to the normal circulation of salt. However, Ada did not spare the businessmen, but specially allocated some official salt to set up "Changping Salt" in remote areas where businessmen did not want to go. If businessmen don't come, the supply of salt is tight and the price rises, the official salt will be sold at a reasonable price to meet the needs of local people and stabilize the market price of salt.

2. The guiding ideology that rich countries do not collect people.

An important guiding ideology of Ada's economic reform is that he understands that the fundamental premise of fiscal revenue lies in developing production, stabilizing people's lives and opposing simple accumulation. What he did was to seek benefits for the country within the tolerance of the people. According to historical records, Ada "always put people first in his financial management". He himself said that "the more accounts, the wider the tax". This means to recuperate, give people a stable production and living condition, and let farmers farm and weave, and live and work in peace and contentment. This is a reasonable idea based on economic development, which is different from a purely financial perspective. He increased taxes from the countryside, not to increase the burden on farmers, but to increase the waste of rural household registration, expand the area of cultivated land and develop agricultural production. He has done a lot of work for this. He called Changping to adjust people's grain and stabilize food prices, which not only prevented cheap grain from hurting farmers, but also prevented expensive grain from hurting people. It is also on this important issue that we can stabilize farmers' lives, protect agricultural production and cultivate tax sources in a reasonable way. Financial and commercial policies have always been regarded by him as a positive means to support the development of production, rather than reducing the burden on farmers in a general sense. Compared with the traditional frivolous fu, this has made a breakthrough. Even today, this is still enlightening.

In principle, Ada attaches great importance to people's tax sentiment, operates as scientifically as possible, and tries to contact people through commercial means instead of direct contact, so as not to arouse people's resentment, make people pay taxes unconsciously, and the state unconsciously increases people's income. This kind of financial management is much more "clever" and "ingenious" than simply forcing tax increases to increase farmers' burden, and it has positive significance even today.

In addition to agriculture, he also carried out his financial management thought of attaching importance to production. For example, he knows that salt making is not simple, and the output and quality are greatly affected by the weather when watching it. He made up his mind to improve salt production, told salt farmers when and what measures to take at any time according to the weather conditions in each season, and often sent officials to guide salt farmers to improve salt-making technology. This is almost a rare example of using the administrative power of state organs to promote technology in feudal times, which was very valuable at that time before the emergence of the advanced thought that "science and technology are the primary productive forces", and Ada's outstanding talent can be seen from this. Ada's deeds of caring about agricultural production were recorded in New Tang Book? Liu Yichuan, an old Tang book? There are many records in Liu Yanchuan and Zi Tongzhi Jian, so I won't repeat them here.

3. Strong mercantilism.

Although the mercantilist thought was not initiated by Ada, it was carried forward in his hands. Ada's purpose of attaching importance to business still lies in his consistent idea, that is, using business as a management tool to increase fiscal revenue and enrich national finance. From this point of view, it is the core of his financial management thought that he vigorously develops government-run undertakings such as salt monopoly, Changping, Pingping and average loss. Compared with his former officials, his control over business is relatively loose. While attaching importance to the government-run business, he also paid attention to making proper use of the sales ability and market development ability of private businesses, so that the goods were sold far and deep in the urban and rural markets, saving the personnel expenses increased by the government's own extensive institutions and reducing various problems brought about by corruption, such as inefficiency, great waste and serious disturbance to the people. At the same time, he used his power to implement preferential policies for private businesses in a big way, such as canceling the original provision of collecting second-class household tax on businessmen and taking a series of measures to facilitate business, so that businessmen at that time did not feel the pain of "three chaos" These measures mobilized the enthusiasm of private businessmen to a great extent, promoted the prosperity of commerce at that time to a certain extent, and also increased the government's fiscal revenue. It can be seen that Ada believes that the economic activities of the state and the commercial activities of private enterprises are important economic components. From this perspective, it is quite a combination of planned economy and market economy. In such an era at that time, it was really impossible for Liu Yan to think like this and do that without any innovative spirit.

4, a strong sense of commodity exchange, pay attention to the role of money in economic development.

In his life's reform career, Ada attached great importance to commodity exchange. Many of his work was promoted by commodity exchange, which became a routine means of his reform, turning many things that should have been done by the corvee into people paid by the government. Therefore, he attached great importance to the role of money in economic development, insisted on adopting a prudent monetary policy, and insisted on monetary stability and price stability, opposing both inflation and excessive austerity policies. Use money as a tool for commodity circulation, not as a means of financial search. Ada, who attached great importance to monetary economy, firmly believed that wage labor paid by money was superior to unpaid and super-economic forced feudal corvee labor. Based on this understanding, he made bold reforms in this regard. For example, in the Tang Dynasty, the government-run handicraft industry was dominated by unpaid labor, until Liu Yanchan adopted the wage labor system in shipbuilding and other major industries, and similar reforms were carried out in major industries related to the national economy and people's livelihood, such as official furnace casting money, water transportation, postal delivery, business situation (mainly local food prices and prices), and the remuneration was quite generous. Ada's thoughts are also reflected in disaster relief. For disasters in various places, he does not approve of simple financial relief, but does not directly provide financial relief. Instead, he supports the masses to develop rural sideline products and the government buys local products and groceries for the victims (these things are mainly for military supplies).

It should be said that Ada's reform, especially his tendency to attach importance to monetary economy, conformed to and promoted the economic development at that time, and greatly increased the economic income of workers, improved the enthusiasm of workers to a certain extent, and improved the efficiency and quality of economic activities, which can be said to be an epoch-making contribution, not only unprecedented, but also many later generations.

5. Pay attention to macro-control by economic means.

In the decades when Ada was in charge of finance and economy, he creatively developed his previous macro-control experience and made great achievements in macro-control. The above-mentioned practice of controlling salt prices is an obvious example. Especially when he was in charge of Changping, stabilizing prices was an important task, mainly food prices. He knows very well that the price of grain, an important commodity, must be controlled by the state and must not be allowed to float. On the basis of market price, supply and demand must be adjusted by handling materials, so that the fluctuation of grain price is limited to the range that is beneficial to production and consumption. He decided to take corresponding measures according to the monthly reports of rain and snow and the changes in market food prices. "Abundance is expensive, but apology is cheap." When the market price is normal, the government will buy some and store them for use in case of bad years. Through these measures, the grain market in the Tang Dynasty was very stable for a long time, and both the people and the country benefited a lot. Following the success of grain work, Ada further listed the adjustment of supply and demand and price stability of other major commodities as its task and goal. The Changping principle has been popularized and applied in his hands, which can be regarded as a creation of Ada. Because the previous generation of Changping was limited to food, the concept of Changping was greatly expanded here.

To grasp the initiative of market price control, we must know the dynamic changes of the market in time. But there were neither telephones nor telegrams at that time, and the communication problem was indeed a problem. However, the clever Ada came up with the best way he could think of at that time: to reform the communication system and build a huge business network through express mail so as to make a decision. In the past, postal services were maintained by corvees and arranged by rich households, which was called "collecting postal services". The postman has a hard life and the postal efficiency is not high. Ada reassigned officials to take charge of the post station, and recruited "drivers" (also called "sick feet") at a high price, trying to improve their living conditions and their treatment, so as to stimulate their enthusiasm for improving work efficiency. As a result, the postal efficiency has been greatly improved, and the state of invalid information has changed in one fell swoop. "From Road to Capital" "Across the street, prices in all directions rise and fall, although it is far from being known in four or five days". All the changes in food prices, the ups and downs of everything in the market, and the surplus and shortage of materials in all directions are transmitted to Beijing station by station through these fast-paced scuds. Relying on this well-informed commercial information network, Ada can keep abreast of the market situation in other regions in Beijing, and the price control right of the market is firmly in his hands, effectively directing the adjustment of material supply and demand throughout the country. The prices of grain and other important commodities are neither too expensive nor too cheap, so the market is always stable. The history books say that he "can control the weight of goods, so that the world will not be very high and low, but things are always flat" and "has his skills." Ada attaches so much importance to the value of information and made such achievements in the operation of 1000 years ago. This is indeed a great innovation, which has great enlightenment for us to engage in market economy today.